Things I learned (am learning) today

[dr4b]

1. Most vending machines have changed appropriately with the season. While this originally resulted in me accidentally getting a hot tea when I wanted a cold tea a few times, I came to a funny conclusion today: If I have a cold and I want hot cocoa or hot tea or something, it takes a lot less effort to put 120 yen into a vending machine down the street and get a nice hot beverage can, than it takes to actually prepare tea or cocoa or whatever. Man, I'm so lazy, but at the same time, I fully support my vending machine overlords.

2. Tonden gives me these 10% off coupons every time I go there, and I always forget I have them. Tonight I brought my coupon there only to realize that the coupon is only good if you spend 2000 yen or more. Being by myself, that never happens. I even told that to the lady at the counter and she was like "That's too bad, I'm so sorry," and then handed me ANOTHER 10% of 2000+ coupon. Sigh.

3. I can finally sort of kind of get the end-of-day answering machine message said in 30 seconds but I still stumble over the words. This is only important because on Thursday Eri won't be at GEOS and I'll be the only one there so it's my problem to change our message on the machine -- in Japanese -- in 30 seconds. The first time I tried to read this thing it took a minute so I'm vastly improving:

お電話ありがとうございます。英会話ジオス赤羽校でございます。せっかくお電話をいただきましたが当校の受付時間は月曜日から土曜日のお昼の１２時から夜９時までとなっております。体験レッスンのお申し込みパンフレットのご要望はフリーダイヤル０１２０－０１１－１０９にて承っております。また生徒様のご連絡はこの留守番電話がお受けいたします。本日はお電話ありがとうございました。

She says my pronunciation is good but I need to stop stumbling over the keigo. (I'd simply never learned ones like that "uketamawatteorimasu" construction before.)

4. Coffee is apparently a really good example for MANY grammatical forms. I think I used some form of "drinking coffee" in every class today, be it from "what is your opinion on coffee" to "drinking too much coffee will cause you to sleep less" to "I guess coffee tastes good" to "Having drunk too much coffee yesterday, I couldn't get to sleep."

And as it is, it seems like EVERYONE in Japan drinks coffee.

Comments

[csg87.livejournal.com]

*zoom*

[hystericblue42.livejournal.com]

I applaud you for having to read that passage quickly! It's quite a mouthful! btw, how is GEOS management? I hope it's a good sight better than NOVA.

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

When faced with sentences like these, remember the CMU battle cry:
朝８時から午後４時まで授業があるからとても忙しいです。

Uketamawaru is a fun verb. Five kana to one kanji! And I'm kinda surprised you've not seen it on trains and things--that's where I picked it up, I think.

[dr4b]

Actually it's that EXACT phrase that is fucking me up in part of it. I'm so inclined to say nani-ji kara GOGO nani-ji that I stumble over making it 12-ji kara YORU 9-ji...

And yeah, I thought you'd get a kick out of this keigo thing. We should have you come to Japan and do our answering machines, you could do the "male uguisujyou" voice pretty well I bet :)

[dvarin.livejournal.com]

そう仰って下さるのは光栄でございます。

It takes me four or five tries to record an answering machine message in English--I'm not sure Japanese would be better. :)

[nykkel.livejournal.com]

So they don't want you speaking Japanese around the students, but then they expect you to be able to rattle off that monstrous thing in 30 seconds?

[the2belo.livejournal.com]

That's what I was about to say. Why do they get their underwear in a knot when you speak Japanese to someone in the office, but force you to read their answering machine recordings?

[oren.livejournal.com]

I just figured it fell under the principle of everyone in Japan is insane.

[dr4b]

Yes, it's pretty stupid.

I don't think it's wrong to want me not to speak Japanese around students, just because there's supposed to be this illusion of "I don't understand you" going on here if they speak to me in Japanese, so they HAVE to speak English. BUT around visitors and such, I think it's stupid. They're maybe partially worried about me being rude, but still, I'd think once I explained that "I don't speak Japanese very well, let me try to tell you this information anyway", it'd be okay. Whatever.

[teravell.livejournal.com]

Wow. *impressed* I still sometimes mess up just answering the phone. (I keep calling myself a manager.)
But why do you have to change it every day? It doesn't say what day of the week it is or anything, so surely they could just record a really nice one and keep it forever?

[dr4b]

So, that is the "end of the day" message. Apparently we have another "during the day" one which is a bit shorter than that. Since we have no manager, the rusubandenwa has to be able to get students' messages when they call saying "I can't make it to class" and both Eri and I are teaching... otherwise we'd have a lot of angry students going "I tried to call and tell you I couldn't come, but there was no answer, why did you mark me as Absent that day?"

[teravell.livejournal.com]

Aaaaoooh. That makes sense.
I think we might actually have two answering machines.

[kawaru.livejournal.com]

I wish I could read that in 30 seconds or less. Wow.

Also, I don't drink coffee, hehe. Well, when I'm at a school and they offer it to me, I don't refuse, but...

[tadzilla.livejournal.com]

I wish I *could* even read that, but I don't know some of the kanji in the second half.

...but then I remembered RikaiChan. :P

[shalifi.livejournal.com]

Don't they color code the drinks according to their temperature? :) When I was there, the buttons were blue for cold and red for hot.

[dr4b]

They do, but if you're in a hurry and on the train platform and your train is coming and you basically just want to throw 120 yen into the machine and get your iced tea and run onto the train, and you're not paying close attention and the machine has recently changed, and suddenly you have a bottle of hot tea, you're kind of confused. Now I'm used to it.